Wells Fargo is not the only banking scandal: RBS accused of causing businesses to fail

RBS has denied trying to profit from deliberately causing the failure of businesses during and after the financial crisis.

Shares in the U.K. government-owned lender have recovered after falling sharply Monday on the whistleblower allegations revealed by the BBC and Buzzfeed.

Documents passed seen by both news outlets show RBS incentivized staff that identified companies which could be moved to its turnaround division, Global Restructuring Group (GRG).

The BBC reported that GRG adminstrators then applied higher interest rates and pressured customers to sell assets in order to repay loans, took equity stakes in businesses and pushed them into administration.

Senior Analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, Laith Khalaf, said Tuesday that while nothing had been proven yet, the Financial Conduct Authority was gathering evidence.

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"Depending on what they find that could mean public enforcement action, public naming and shaming and it could mean fines," he told CNBC.

Khalaf said the evidence so far suggested a culture that was not client focused.

"On the face of it, RBS was looking to boost its own revenues potentially by damaging and pushing other business to the brink," he said.

This is not the first scandal concerning a bank's business practices. In the U.S., Wells Fargo recently reached a $190 million settlement after its employees opened nearly 2 million fake accounts in order to meet sales goals.

RBS denies deliberately causing SME failure but said in a statement it should have done better for some customers.

"We have already acknowledged that, in some areas we could have done better for SME customers ... a number of our customers did not receive the level of service they should have done or, importantly, that they would receive now," it read.